Passionate about IP! Since June 2003 the IPKat weblog has covered copyright, patent, trade mark, info-tech and privacy/confidentiality issues from a mainly UK and European perspective. The team is David Brophy, Birgit Clark, Merpel, Jeremy Phillips, Eleonora Rosati, Darren Smyth, Annsley Merelle Ward and Neil J. Wilkof. You're welcome to read, post comments and participate in our community. You can email the Kats here

For the half-year to 30 June 2015, the IPKat's regular team is supplemented by contributions from guest bloggers Suleman Ali, Tom Ohta and Valentina Torelli.

Regular round-ups of the previous week's blogposts are kindly compiled by Alberto Bellan.

Monday, 10 February 2014

* to register for this Thursday's IP and Retail Conference 2014, held at the Holborn Bars De Vere, London (details here)* to let the organisers know if you can't attend the Blaca/IPKat seminar on Wednesday afternoon on "Are human rights moral rights?" (details here), so that we can make sure that your place can be given to someone on the reserve list.* to comment on Case C-661/13 Astellas Pharma, a really important reference to the Court of Justice of the European Union on the scope of the Bolar Exemption from patent infringement and the conducting of research.

Different but oh, so similar ...

Lookalike event -- but it's not a copy. The Kats' friends at the Competition Law Association have another event coming up: it's called "Lookalikes - an unfair practice and unfair competition?" No, it's not a lookalike version of the recent JIPLP/GRUR Int event on a similar subject, but it does reflect the high level of interest which is currently being shown in this important topic. Speakers are our good friends Johanna Gibson & John Noble. The date is Thursday, 13 March 2014, 6pm at the London office of Withers Worldwide LLP. You can get the details here.

" ... and then the witnesstold the judge this ..."

Post-trial secrecy of evidence in patent proceedings. Smith & Nephew v Convatec patent litigation does seem to occur with some frequency on this weblog, among other places. For example (in chronological order) here, here, here, here, here,here and here. At the end of January this year, the parties were back in court again,here, to resolve an important bit of tidying up after the event: how far should an order that is intended to preserve the confidentiality of evidence submitted in the course of the proceedings be allowed to extent once those proceedings are concluded. Mr Justice Birss gives clear guidance, separating out that evidence that genuinely casts light on a party's technical operations and commercial aspirations from that which does not. There's a handy note on PatLit here.